


See Me As I Am

by Branithar



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Hospitalization, Hospitals, M/M, Motorcycles, Supernatural Elements, Traffic Collisions, Trans Male Character, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23540791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Branithar/pseuds/Branithar
Summary: While on a trip to clear his head, Calum hits a kangaroo and is left in critical condition. His life changes, but not in the way he expects as he learns that the world isn't what he thought it was.
Relationships: Calum Hood/Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford/Luke Hemmings
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

There was something deeply calming about being the only person on a long road at night. When the only light was the gold spilling from his motorbike’s headlight and the silver the full moon had painted everything it could see in, Calum could pretend that he was the only thing that existed in the world. He guessed that was why he preferred these lonely country roads over the freeways that could take him so much further before his tantrums, as his family called them, wore off and he was left crawling back, burnt out and begging for forgiveness. 

After years of more of these tantrums than he could count, Calum knew these roads like the back of his hand. In maybe an hour, he’d take a turn into a town so small it didn’t appear on most maps and stop at the petrol station to fuel up and maybe grab something to eat, then disappear on another long dark road for another few hours. Eventually he’d reach a slightly bigger town with a motel and sleep through the day, then decide if he was still keyed up enough to keep going or if it was time to go back to the shit reality of his life. 

He always went back, no matter how far he got. The first few times he’d done this, he’d been fully convinced that it was forever, that he was going to ride for days, weeks, months until he found somewhere nobody knew him and start a new life on his own terms. He still always fantasised about that when he set off, but now after a day or two the knowledge that he never went through with his plan would start seeping in and he’d spend the rest of his tantrum fighting it off. He could only really wonder how far he’d get this time. 

As Calum mused, a large shape burst from the treeline, too close for him to react. His bike hit it dead on and he was briefly aware of bracing himself as he flew through the air, the words _well shit_ making a short appearance in his mind before he hit the road, nearly two hundred kilos of metal following him down. 

Dazed, Calum became aware of the deafening pounding in his head, his eyes peering through the scrapes across his visor at the distant shape lying on the road. A kangaroo. Disjointedly, he remembered rolling for what felt like both forever and a few seconds before coming to a rest on his side, his bike screeching as it slid down the road. His brain wouldn’t put everything together, but thinking about the damage it must have taken made him cringe. 

As he gazed at the kangaroo, a large shape emerged from the trees. He couldn’t quite make it out, but at first it looked like a dog. As it approached him, Calum noticed that it moved weirdly, like a human walking on all fours, and there was something off about the shape of it. Another dog-thing followed it onto the road, ears pricked as it glanced down the road and sniffed at the kangaroo. 

The first dog-thing got close enough to snuffle investigatively at Calum’s helmet. Whatever it was, Calum prayed that it wouldn’t attack if he kept playing dead. Not that he had a lot of other options. In the light of the moon, he could see that some of the fingers of his right hand were bent horribly out of shape, a dull pain growing as his shock wore off. 

As the first dog-thing moved behind him, maybe to check out the wreck of his only freedom from the painful ordeal of having his family, the one by the kangaroo flopped down to watch. Through his helmet and the blood rushing in his ears, Calum thought he could hear sticks breaking. The noises stopped after maybe a minute and he wondered what the dog-thing had been doing. 

A pained noise escaped Calum’s lips as the dog-thing behind him started poking at his body, setting his ribs on fire. No, not the dog-thing. He hadn’t noticed a car approaching, but someone was touching him, unzipping a jacket pocket and fishing his phone out. 

“At least this didn’t get smashed,” a voice commented, “Get the kangaroo off the road, I’ll call him an ambulance.” 

The animals must have been hers. The one laying by the kangaroo heaved itself off the road as she dialed 000, but instead of using its teeth it grabbed the kangaroo’s tail with its front paws and dragged it to the side of the road on its misshapen back legs. 

“Save some for me,” the woman called reproachfully as it tucked into the carcass, “Um, I need an ambulance,” she explained to the phone. 

As she gave their location and described the state Calum was in, he wished that the strangeness of the situation was enough to distract him from the growing pain. He needed air, but every attempt at a deep breath was met with a stabbing in his chest. A throbbing agony in his legs got stronger every second and he couldn’t bring himself to look down to see what was wrong with them. That was probably for the best anyway. The realisation of what he’d done made his stomach turn. 

“Sorry, I’m running out of charge,” the woman said. 

That wasn’t right. Calum had made sure it was full when he left the motel a few hours ago and hadn’t used it since. 

“No, I can’t stay on, I’m nearly out. Thank you.” The woman hung up and Calum felt her slip the phone back into his pocket. 

The sounds of breaking sticks returned for a minute, ceasing just before the other dog-thing jumped over Calum and joined the one eating the kangaroo. They tore into what was left of it together, soon reducing it to bloody bones which they tossed into the trees before slipping away and leaving Calum on his own again. 

He vaguely wondered where the woman had gone, if she lived around here and why she hadn’t used her own phone to call him an ambulance, anything to distract him from his agony. It felt like hours before the ambulance arrived, blue and red lights illuminating the gouges in his visor and nearly blinding him as EMTs rushed to his side.


	2. Chapter 2

Calum couldn’t tell if he’d been brought in hours or a few minutes ago. People were rushing in and out, hooking him up to machines, shining lights in his eyes and jabbing needles into him. He paid no attention to the things they were saying in urgent tones. He knew he was in bad shape and didn’t really want to mull over _how_ bad, so he just gazed around at the chaos, trying not to feel his body as painkillers kicked in. 

Someone put a hand on his forehead, the noise around him dying as everyone seemed to fade to ghostly shapes. The hand withdrew and he looked around, surprised by how light his body felt. 

“Can you move? We don’t have long.” 

Calum sat up, his eyes falling on the only solid person in the room, a curly-haired nurse with a pointed chin and pretty eyes. The nurse handed him a blanket and helped him off the gurney. Wrapping the blanket around his shoulders in an instinctive nervousness about his chest being visible, Calum looked at his legs in surprise. All the pain was gone now, his body as whole and unscathed as it had been yesterday. 

“Do you know where you are?” the nurse asked him. 

“A hospital,” he answered, looking at the blurry figures that raced around them. 

“I’m Ashton. You’re Calum Hood?” 

“Yeah. What’s happening?” 

Ashton gave him an apologetic look and gestured at the gurney. “You’re dying.” 

“Oh.” Calum looked back, shocked to see himself lying there, looking like roadkill. As he watched, a ghostly figure pressed defibrillator pads to his body and he noticed the flat line on the machine monitoring his vitals. “Fuck.” 

“We’re doing what we can,” Ashton assured him, “But it’s nowhere near enough. There’s too much damage. There’s one last thing we can try, but...you need to give us the okay. It could have permanent side effects, if it works at all.”

“Well, do it,” Calum said, realising that this was probably a hallucination his dying brain had come up with. That would explain...everything. 

“It’s an experimental treatment,” Ashton warned him, “We _hope_ that it will repair the damage and leave you human, but we really don’t know what will actually happen.” 

Calum shrugged off the weird wording, noticing another Ashton in a nearby chair, slumped as if he were sleeping. “Do what you want, I don’t care.” 

“Can I ask you some questions about your medical history?”

Calum smiled drily. What an elaborate hallucination. “Sure.” 

Ashton ran through the kinds of questions Calum would expect, asking about allergies, medications and past procedures. Humouring him, Calum told him about getting top surgery a few years ago and being on T since about a year before that, then the various procedures leading up to his bottom surgery not long ago, curious about where this would all go if he played along. Maybe Ashton would turn into a dragon. 

When he was done, Ashton told him to lie on the gurney again. His hand returned to Calum’s forehead and the noise and shapes of the people around them became clear again, his body getting heavy as the pain returned. 

As Ashton’s hand disappeared, someone shone a light in Calum’s eyes, telling him to say something if he could hear them.


	3. Chapter 3

Trembling, Calum coughed into the toilet again, chunks of his breakfast spilling from his lips and chin. Something had to have been wrong with those scrambled eggs and the sickening aches of his broken bones weren’t helping. 

“ _Shit._ ”

Calum glanced over his shoulder, stomach turning for a new reason. 

“Did you fall?” Ashton asked, looking alarmed.

Calum shook his head, wishing that he would stop staring. He was _not_ feeling incredibly dignified at the moment. “Had to throw up.” 

Ashton lingered for a moment. “I’ll get you some water.”

“Thanks.” Calum tore off some toilet paper and wiped his mouth, cringing at how gross everything felt. 

He’d been trying to keep himself clean, but wrapping his casts and bandages in plastic and sitting in the uncomfortable chair in his bathroom—which was usually kept over the toilet, but he’d shoved it away to be sick—made showering a miserable experience and he never felt completely clean when he was done. 

As promised, Ashton came back with a glass of water and crouched beside Calum as he swished around a mouthful and spat it into the toilet. Very attractive. 

“Need help getting up?” Ashton asked when he was done. 

“No.” Calum shifted, wincing when he moved his foot wrong and felt a flash of tension run up his calf. He surrendered and let Ashton help him to his feet, accepting that he was never gonna get his number. 

Ashton took him back to his bed before fetching his crutches from where he’d left them on the bathroom floor. “I might have something that’ll help,” he said as he returned, leaning the crutches against Calum’s bed, “Be right back.”

Calum laid back, staring at the ceiling miserably. He didn’t keep much track, but chucking up usually made him feel better, like whatever bad shit was in his system was finally out and everything was fine again. His mind drifted back to a doctor telling him that the biggest thing they needed to look out for with his injuries now was infection. Hopefully the way he was feeling was just lack of sleep or something.

“Try this,” Ashton suggested as he returned, handing Calum a cup of something bright red. 

Calum accepted the surprisingly warm glass, eyeing the crimson substance suspiciously. “What is it?”

“Blood.”

Calum scoffed. “ _Ha ha._ ”

“I’m not joking.”

Looking at Ashton again, Calum frowned. 

“You…might be turning,” Ashton explained, “The cocktail transfusions you’ve been getting are part vampire blood. It was just supposed to be enough to keep your brain alive when your lungs were collapsed, but…” Ashton gestured helplessly. “We don’t have the mixture perfected yet. It needs a lot of work.” 

“Vampire blood,” Calum deadpanned. 

Ashton grimaced. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but…yeah. Vampires are real.” 

What a weird joke. 

Calum took a cautious sip, grimacing at the metallic taste. “Yeah, I think I’m still human. It tastes disgusting.”

“That’s normal,” Ashton said, “Being a vampire doesn’t change the taste, it just…forces you to get used to it.”

“Fuck me, then.”

Calum’s nurse really made him drink blood just then. Actual blood. 

“What kind of blood’s this, then?” 

“Human,” Ashton told him, no hint of laughter in his eyes. 

Calum really couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. The upside of Ashton apparently being either batshit or a horrible prankster was that Calum suddenly didn’t care about not getting his number anymore. He set the glass down on his table. 

“Can I see a doctor?” 

Ashton went to the door, but instead of leaving he closed it. Shit. 

Calum leaned away as he came back, but Ashton went straight for the chair in the corner and sat down apparently dozing off immediately. He stared for a moment, confused and more than a bit worried, but remembered the remote control another nurse had shown him his first night here. Grabbing it, he made to press the button to call a nurse when he felt a hand on his forehead, pushing him back down to the pillow. 

All at once, every ache in his body disappeared and he felt lighter, like he was made of clouds. 

Ashton looked down at him, an eyebrow raised. “Sit up.”

Calum narrowed his eyes at him. “I want a doctor.” 

Ashton rolled his eyes and grabbed Calum’s wrist, pulling him off his bed. Calum yelled, expecting to hit the floor and rebreak all his bones, but he instead found himself regaining his balance easily, the bandages gone. 

“What the fuck?”

“I know it’s a lot,” Ashton repeated, “But there are things you don’t know about the world.” 

Calum looked back at his bed, where the trainwreck of his body remained. “What the fuck is happening?”

“I pulled you out of your body, like I did the night you got here.” 

Calum looked at him and the body in the chair. He’d thought that had been his imagination, some jumble of memories his mind stuffed together in a dream. “You … Am I dead?”

“No, it’s more like a coma,” Ashton explained, “But I try not to do this for long since it leaves both our bodies open to whoever wants them. If I put you back, are you gonna be chill?”

Hesitantly, Calum nodded and got back on the bed. The pain returned as Ashton pressed a hand to his forehead. His hand disappeared after a moment and he stirred in the chair, blinking as he stood up. 

Calum looked at the glass on his table. “So…I can’t eat human food anymore?” 

“You can, but you’ll need blood to be able to digest it,” Ashton said, “Assuming you _are_ actually turning. You could just have an upset stomach or something.” 

“Is it safe to drink it if I’m not turning?”

Ashton nodded. “The transfusions you’ve had will keep it from doing any damage.” 

Calum took the glass with a sigh. “Guess it can’t be much worse than eating someone out on their period,” he reasoned halfheartedly. 

Ashton grinned. “That’s the spirit. I have to see another patient now, but I’ll check up on you soon. Try to finish that glass before it starts to congeal.”

Calum grimaced.

**Author's Note:**

> This is another prompt-based work. I collected a few from deepwaterwritingprompts on Tumblr that had a similar theme:  
> “ Monster blood was great for human illness. The hospital did a roaring and very illegal trade in the basement. ”  
> “ The head cardiologist didn’t let us call them monsters, the things that came and went in the night. “Patients,” he said, “They’re just patients.” ”  
> “ The night was filled with the beeping of my heart rate monitor and the gentle breathing of the thing that occupied the floor below me. "
> 
> I run tran5rightsos on Tumblr! Feel free to send asks about this or any of my other 5sos fics!
> 
> Comments are always welcome.


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